Ben Johnson Takes Aim at His and Bears' Real 2025 Problem Area

Ben Johnson's 2025 success has brought forth 2026 coach of the year projections, and maybe more shirtless Sunday celebrations.

It isn't all easy for Johnson. He even lost one to Matt LaFleur last year, although he did eventually make good on his prediction of two victories over the Packers coach.

Now Johnson is admitting to a real problem he had last year, and this season there will be an effort to correct this. It's slow-start syndrome, whether this means the Bears' regular season or for games in general. He even put out a possible reason why it happened to the Bears in the past.

"Well, I mean, that's the whole intent of training camp is to make sure that we're good to go for the first quarter of the season but I think the best teams in the NFL, they start fast and I think they end well," Johnson said Tuesday before practice. "They're able to handle whatever adversity comes their way whether guys go down, other guys step up. I think they beat teams with winning records and playoff teams. We've got one of those Week 1.

What can Ben Johnson NOT do? https://t.co/oHYYfDp525
— Just Another Year Chicago: Bears (@JAYChi_Bears) September 8, 2026

"So yeah, I don't think there's any secret to coming out of the gate hot. I think all 32 teams want to do that right now. Like I said, as a coach a trap that I've ran into in the past is trying to bite off a little bit more than you can chew early on in the season. Really our intent as a coaching staff is come out and play fast."

Last year the Bears started 0-2 before they gained their first win. They did outscore opponents 102-61 in first quarters but failed to outscore nine of their opponents in those first quarters. Caleb Williams had an 84.4 passer rating in first halves, 10 points lower than in second halves.

What are your expectations for Ben Johnson and the Bears’ offense this season?

(Via @CHGO_Bears) pic.twitter.com/QwdbnGyT5R
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) September 8, 2026

So Johnson sounds as if he's going to be scaling it back a bit early in the season with the offense, compared with what he was doing as last season progressed.

It's not entirely an offensive problem

Johnson did admit it's not all on the offense to come out with fast starts.

"Well, it's the responsibility of the offense to score every time we hit the grass, so that's how we view it," he said. "Of course, there's complementary football.

"We'd love to get a lead and protect the lead if we don't happen to to play the game that way and we're behind, we we got to find a way to to come back from behind. So we'll find out a lot about this team. We won't know Week 1 who we are yet. So that's where this this first month, all of September, is going to be a lot of trying to figure out who this 2026 team is and where we need to complement each other."

Last year Caleb Williams
(among 38 qual QBs, per @FantasyPtsData)

22nd in ypa
30th in adjusted comp %
30th in highly accurate throw rate
34th in catchable target rate
25th in hero throw rate
10th-highest off target rate pic.twitter.com/YyWN2GUmaZ
— Derek Brown (@DBro_FFB) August 6, 2026

What they do know is they can't afford to leave it to Williams to bail everyone out late in the fourth quarter again, like he did last year with seven fourth-quarter comebacks.

Expecting lightning to strike in same place twice would leave the Bears disappointed plenty of times this year after all of those scintillating rallies last year.

A positive note on Caleb, is that he progressed a ton in the second half of the year.

Through the first eight weeks, QBI had him at 88. From Week 9 onwards, he performed at 104.@FB_FilmAnalysis for the assist https://t.co/Kl3tcxtAQk
— Austin Mock (@amock419) September 8, 2026

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